[Discussion] PUBL.: The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds. The Specter of Genocide: Mass
Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003. ix + 384 pp. Appendix, index. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-521-82063-4.
*Reviewed by:* Meredith Hindley, Department of History, American University.
*Published by:* H-German <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Egerman> (December,
2004)
Executing the Twentieth Century

With The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective,
editors Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan have assembled a noteworthy
essay collection that attempts to make sense of some of the most tragic
and bloodthirsty episodes of the twentieth century. The essays, written
by historians, political scientists, and sociologists, seek to discern
the political, social, cultural, and economic factors that led to
genocide. The question that haunts the authors is how and why does a
regime turn genocidal?

The field of genocide studies has been slow to develop, much like the
concept itself. While incidents of mass murder can be found throughout
history, the legal concept of "genocide" developed in the twentieth
century. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" (from
the Greek "genos" meaning "race" and the Latin "occidere" meaning "to
kill") in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Following the
creation of the United Nations, Lemkin and others fought for the
adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide in 1948. The convention defines genocide as "acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group." The acts include killing, causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and imposing conditions
intended "to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
(The book helpfully includes the text of the convention in an appendix.)
Significantly, the convention does not apply to acts committed against a
political group. The omission was necessary to ensure the Soviet Union
would sign the convention.

Genocide studies as a field came into its own during the 1990s. Interest
in the topic first coalesced around the Holocaust, which attracted
scholarly and public interest in the mid-1970s after decades of neglect.
An explosion of research in the 1980s focused on how the Nazi regime
intended to bring about the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." In
the 1990s, the focus shifted to the victims, bystanders, and ordinary
citizens who carried out the killing. As Holocaust scholarship matured,
scholars also began to turn their attention to other acts of genocide in
the twentieth century. Without seeking to diminish the import of the
Holocaust, many believed that a comparative approach could yield
important clues to the question of how and why a regime turns genocidal.
Recent and contemporary acts of genocide, particularly Cambodia and
those unfolding in East Timor and Yugoslavia, also fueled interest in
the field. Because of source and language limitations, the majority of
scholarship continues to focus on the perpetrators and the
organizational structures that allowed them to carry out their plans.

The Specter of Genocide functions both as a cogent introduction to the
field of genocide studies and as a measure of its state. Taken as a
whole, the essay collection portrays the twentieth century as a turning
point in the history of mass murder. What marks the century is the
occurrence of genocide as a state-sanctioned or state-sponsored campaign
in the context of war. The killing transpired not in a random or
haphazard manner, but as a result of organized and calculated campaigns
of deportation, concentration, and killing. Many of the scholars see the
violent nature of the century--a local conflict or major war stains each
decade--as a contributing factor. Ongoing violence desensitized
populations and made them receptive to participating in previously
morally reprehensible acts. Others point to the rise of modernity, with
its new methods of warfare, surveillance, and identification as a
contributing factor.

These explanations, however, do not account for the trigger--the element
that transforms ordinary wartime brutality into genocide. All of the
scholars, directly or indirectly, acknowledge the pervasive and
destructive role played by ideology, be it racial, ethnic, political,
expansionist, or religious. Kiernan argues that individually these
ideological elements are benign (nationalistic at their worst) and lack
the power necessary to precipitate mass murder. But when they are mixed
together, along with a dose of organization, they generate a lethal
concoction. Indeed, the major genocides of the twentieth century were
committed by three very distinct regimes: the militarist Turks, the
fascist Nazis, and communist Khmer Rouge. They all, however, embraced an
ideological cocktail that advocated the creation of a racially,
ethnically, and politically pure state.

The terrible results that came from the convergence of war and ideology
can be seen in the genocides that marked the First and Second World
Wars. In examining the Armenian genocide, Jay Winter argues that total
war created the conditions that allowed genocide to develop. "In effect,
total war did not produce genocide; it created the military, political,
and cultural space in which it could occur, and occur again," he writes
(p. 191). Winter contends that Turkey's war mobilization generated a
culture of hatred that demonized the enemy and increased the populace's
tolerance for violence. The very day that the Allies landed at Gallipoli
in a misbegotten attempt to keep Turkey out of the war, Turkish
officials launched a campaign against the Armenians, whom they regarded
as a threat to internal security. "What turned a war crime into a
genocidal act was the context of total war," writes Winter, "a context
that translated deportation swiftly into the mass slaughter, abuse, and
starvation of an entire ethnic group potentially troublesome to an
authoritarian regime at war" (p. 208). Winter also sees a direct link
between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. An opportunistic
student of history, Hitler noted that the Armenian genocide occurred
under the watchful eyes of the German army and that its perpetrators
suffered no dire consequences for killing nearly one million Armenians.

Gellately admirably tackles Hitler's diabolical scheme, arguing that his
war of conquest played a seminal role in the implementation of the
Holocaust. The Nazi regime laid the groundwork for its campaign against
the Jews and other undesirables prior to 1939, slowly desensitizing the
population. "As the war continued, more and more people grew willing to
accept with a shrug what would have been unthinkable for them when
Hitler was first appointed," he writes (p. 242). Their indifference was
reinforced by the brutality of the war at home and abroad. As the regime
grew more radical in its plans, so grew the German people's capacity to
embrace them. With the public pacified, Hitler was free to carry out his
plans against the Jews. Significantly, the war with Russia made the
Final Solution more than just a racial fantasy; as the German army
advanced, Russia's large Jewish population came under Nazi control.
Germany's brutal occupation policies created an environment in which
identification, deportation, concentration, and, finally, killing, could
be carried out with little or no interference. Ideology fueled the
campaign against the Jews, but war provided the opportunity and subterfuge.

Along with war and ideology, revolution--or the revolutionary
spirit--has played a central role in fostering genocide. Eric D. Weitz
argues that historians should resist the temptation to explain genocide
merely as a byproduct of modernity. He regards the fusion of race and
violence with the political aims of revolutionary movements and regimes
as the real innovation. In reordering the political, social, and
economic organization of nation, a revolution also recasts the
composition of its society. This process invariably involves a discourse
of purity and cleanness, which becomes part of the regime's new ideology
and rituals. At the same time, by virtue of having supported the
revolutionary agenda, the populace becomes invested in its success. Its
allegiance makes possible small acts, such as looting, snitching, and
localized violence, that furthers the regime's ideology, broadens its
brutality, and facilitates its genocidal campaign.

Edward Kissi finds this pattern at work in the genocides perpetrated by
two revolutionary regimes: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and Ethiopia's Dergue.
>From April 1975 to January 1979, the Khmer Rouge consolidated its newly 
won power and launched a campaign to purify the state. It targeted
officials of the previous regime, intellectuals educated in the West,
ethnic groups, religious groups, and foreigners. It was a particularly
thorough program. For example, only two thousand Buddhist monks survived
from an original population of seventy thousand. Unlike the Khmer Rouge,
the Dergue never succeeded in consolidating its power, facing constant
internal opposition. Over a seventeen-year period (1974-91), the Dergue
used force--often lethal--to combat armed uprisings and destroy
political opposition groups. Kissi argues that the Dergue's failure to
establish absolute control prevented it from engaging in a cleansing
campaign akin to the one carried out by the Khmer Rouge. Without total
political control of the state, a revolutionary regime is unable to
"purify" the regime.

Not surprisingly, counter-revolutionary regimes are not immune from the
temptation to purify their ranks. Using new evidence from the Soviet
archives, Nicolas Werth finds that the Soviet Union's Great Terror of
1937-38, which resulted in 800,000 deaths, targeted not only social and
political elites, but also "socially harmful elements" and "social
outcasts." While the Great Terror is more popularly known for the
farcical public show trials of old Bolsheviks, NKVD also carried out a
secret program of "social cleansing" with the Politburo's approval.
Under "Order no. 00447," kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet
elements were "repressed" through a combination of deportation and
killing. Orders were also issued against Germans, Poles, and other
groups that Stalin feared might stage uprisings in the wake of the
Spanish Civil War. Although the death toll of the Great Terror does not
compare to the Great Famine of 1932-33, Werth finds the cleansing
impulse a troubling mutation in the regime's behavior, one that shares
parallels with Nazi Germany's eugenics program. Both programs engaged in
social engineering by actively identifying a group, engaging in harsh
policing practices, and ultimately murder.

The collection also tackles the relationship of colonialism and
genocide. Elazar Barkan notes that the evolving concept of human rights
has prompted reconsideration of the treatment of indigenous people under
the imperial project. He urges Europeans and Americans to reflect on
their conduct in dealing with indigenous populations and scholars to
"underscore more the genocidal component of colonialism." Undoubtedly,
the course of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism demands more
research and soul searching, but Barkan's essay will not help the cause.
Too often it reads like a screed of the sins of the West since the
advent of European exploration.

Two other thoughtful essays, however, illustrate just how much there is
to learn about the relationship. Isabel Hull examines Germany's
suppression of the Herero revolt in southwest Africa from 1904-07,
during which approximately 75-80 percent of the Herero and Nama were
killed. Over these three years, the German military's response to the
political uprising was marked by an escalation in force. She argues that
the use of extermination became embedded in German military culture,
predisposing its leaders to use genocide to solve political problems.
The brutality of the First World War only served to harden the approach
and create a climate that made the military receptive to Nazi ideology
and its Pan-German world view. "Without being anchored in actual
practice and perpetuated in institutions, ideology would scarcely have
endured long enough to capture a state," she writes (p. 143). While Hull
emphasizes the need for scholars to consider the role of military
culture in promoting genocide, the same could be said for the need to
consider how the colonial experience influenced the attitude of the
Great Powers toward genocide at home and abroad.

In considering the origins of the Rwandan genocide, Robert Melson finds
Belgian colonialism a guilty midwife to a bloody mix of ideology, war,
and revolution. He argues that the Hutu campaign against the Tutsi was
the "product of a postcolonial state, a racialist ideology, a revolution
claiming democratic legitimization, and war-all manifestations of the
modern world" (p. 326). During their rule, Belgian administrators
promoted the minority Tutsis as the racially superior elite of Rwanda,
while casting the majority Hutu as their racial, social, and economic
inferiors. In time, the previously friendly tribes came to believe the
Belgian version of their social structure. When the new Rwandan republic
was established, the Hutus assumed control of the government, officially
making the Tutsis second-class citizens. Melson argues that the 1959
revolution created a racial state, laying the foundation for the blood
bath of the 1990s. After the revolution, more than 336,000 Tutsi
refugees fled to the neighboring countries of Uganda and Burundi. Over
the next three decades, they conducted a guerilla war against Rwanda,
culminating with an invasion in 1990. In response to the invasion, Hutu
Power, an elite group of government officials, began laying the ground
work for a genocidal campaign that would permanently wipe out the Tutsi
threat. After the Rwandan president's plane was shot down in 1994, while
returning from peace talks, Hutu Power gave the kill order, prompting
ordinary Hutu peasants and farmers to turn on their Tutsi neighbors.
Decades of inequity and fear of subjugation fueled the Hutu populace's
genocidal rage as they turned hoes and machetes into deadly weapons.

As one proceeds through the volume--which also includes essays on
imperial Japan, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, and Guatemala--it is hard to
ignore the depressing conclusion that state-sponsored mass murder is
central to the story of the twentieth century. Genocide was not an
aberration, but a defining characteristic. The story of genocide,
however, remains in many ways a macabre side show. While it is not a
topic for the faint of heart, the study of genocide is not merely an
exhortation into the mechanics of mass murder, but also an inquiry into
the very essence of what drives the modern nation-state and its
populace. As such, genocide deserves a place in the story of the
twentieth century alongside the evolution of the Great Powers into Super
Powers, colonial powers into post-colonial powers, and traditional
land-based armies into rapid response forces. Indeed, the story of
genocide cuts across--even encompasses--all of these forces, while
raising troubling questions about progress, technology, and morality.

But before genocide can occupy a more central role, additional attention
needs to be given to the diplomacy of genocide, including the ability of
the United Nations to serve as a watchdog and the factors that cause
world powers to be bystanders to genocidal campaigns. This work will
help make genocide part of international history and thread it into the
national histories of the bystanders. At the same time, the study of
genocide should not remain the provenance of political and military
historians. Work by social and cultural historians is essential to
providing important insights into the local mores and relationships that
made it possible for lifelong neighbors to become murderer and victim.


Citation: Meredith Hindley. "Review of Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan,
eds, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective,"
H-German, H-Net Reviews, December, 2004. URL:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=298451104947472.